Menu
Next in the queue
60
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
55/100Critics
34/100Scholars
91/100Author:
Bart D. Ehrman
Publisher:
Simon Schuster
Date:
March 31, 2020
A distinguished professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill recounts the long history of the West's notion of the afterlife, ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh up to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. One of Ehrmanâs startling conclusions is that there never was a single Greek, Jewish, or Christian understanding of the afterlife, but numerous competing views.
What The Reviewers Say
... a fulsome sweep through the biblical, philosophical, and literary canon.
... will rankle his longtime fundamentalist Christian antagonists and amuse his typically liberal and secularist devotees.
Bart D Ehrman’s latest work of popular scholarship is boldly subtitled A History of the Afterlife, but it is a history in only the most rudimentary sense. An unsatisfying read, Heaven and Hell is more of a bulked-up timeline, which evades close historical work and nuanced contextual thought by either dismissing the possibility of such work or wilfully misunderstanding the nature and function of literary texts.
Heaven and Hell is not an easy read. Rather than a developmental chronology, Mr. Ehrman jumps back and forth between various periods. I was quite surprised that he virtually ignores the influence of Egypt. The most glaring omission in this book is the absence of the evolution of the power that became the Devil. The Devil arrived late in human history (our modern concept is not found in the Jewish Scriptures).
